This invention relates to the field of computer systems management and, in particular, to methods, hardware products, and computer program products for identifying and discovering information technology (IT) resources.
In present-day IT management systems, it is necessary to manage a plurality of resources as well as a plurality of relationships among these resources. Unfortunately, the resources that are to be managed are often unaware and uninvolved in their manageability. This leads to many issues with respect to how the resources are discovered, how they are identified, and the overall coherency and integrity of the management system itself. The lack of involvement from the resources results in management tools having to take on a multiplicity of resource management responsibilities. This allocation of responsibility is inefficient and ultimately results in a lack of integration and interoperability between the various management tools used within a typical datacenter.
Resource and relationship discovery illustrates one example of the problems that may arise in the context of existing IT management systems. More specifically, one of the first tasks that today's management tools are required to perform is to locate and index the resources and resource interrelationships that are to be managed. This is often accomplished with periodic scanning, data gathering and probing techniques that attempt to learn as much about the IT management system environment as possible. Unfortunately, this process is error prone and nondeterministic. Failure to locate the same data on subsequent discovery runs are often misinterpreted and assumed to imply that a given resource no longer exists. Correlation is used to determine if different information refers to the same resource. In reality, the entire present-day approach of discovering resources and relationships is fundamentally nothing more than a guessing game.
Resource discovery is related to resource identification. An identity must be unique in time and space for maximum utility, whereas commonly used resource identifiers can be and are often re-used; thus, these common identifiers are names, not identities. Realizing that resources themselves do not provide any value usable as an identity, today's management tools and systems have taken on the responsibility as the naming authority for the resources that they are managing by forging identities on behalf of the resources they manage. The scope and lifecycle for this identity is then tied to the management tool and is therefore separate and distinct from the resource. This leads to resources having many independent and unique identities that are narrowly scoped to the tools that have assigned them. Furthermore, identities are typically assigned based on the use of correlation, which is imprecise and inconsistent.
In view of the foregoing shortcomings, what is needed is a technique for efficiently allocating resource discovery and identification processes among a plurality of tools and resources in an IT management system. The technique should offer an evolutionary approach that allows shifts in responsibilities for these processes to occur over an extended period of time.